Migrants may have imported a master

To a seven-year-old Gary Opit, they were just old paintings lining the walls of his paternal grandparents' Bellevue Hill mansion.

The dusty oils were not as interesting for a young boy growing up in the 1950s as the gramophone clanking out How Much is that Doggy in the Window? or the claw-foot walnut desk under which he could hide inside the cavernous sandstone house.

But half a century later, the North Coast environmental consultant is suddenly reflecting on those "family paintings". Gary Opit now vaguely remembers one of a boat with two men in it and another wildish impression of a toddler sitting in a high chair, but he has no idea who painted them and what they might be worth.

Gary's father, Leon, 89, who lives in retirement in Surfers Paradise, also strains to remember details about the collection lining the upstairs walls of Lesser and Eva Opit's family home in Kulgoa Road, Bellevue Hill. They were of no significance during his childhood and even less so in his adult years when Leon ran a coffee shop in Kings Cross and later made and lost a modest fortune developing real estate on the Gold Coast.

The two men have reason to pause and reconsider. Their brother and son, John Opit, claims the paintings are among a collection worth $67 million stolen from his bush studio in the tiny northern NSW town of Limpinwood, now the subject of a bizarre police investigation and, possibly, one of the world's most amazing art heists. The story has been greeted with much scepticism in the art world, particularly John Opit's claim that the stolen works include an 1873 painting by the French impressionist Paul Cezanne titled Paul Cezanne's Son in a Highchair.

The big problem for the sceptics is not so much that John Opit presents himself as an ageing subsistence-level hippie/artist, but that none of the works - neither the Cezanne nor the claimed Winslow Homer, John Peter Russell, John Opie or John Glover - appear to have a provenance that can be traced. If real, then how could they be unknown? But if you listen to Leon Opit's story, it may be worth keeping an open mind. Though his short-term memory is understandably dodgy, Leon remembers clearly the wonderful stories told by his mother Eva; from her birth and earliest years in Romania to the years the family travelled across Europe, including Paris, to Turkey where she and her two brothers, Abe and Emanuel, ate dates on the back of camel train, then New York where the family's tailor shop burned down and London, where her mother died of appendicitis.

Gary Opit. Photo: Paul Broben

Such was the breadth of their travels that by the time Leon Myerson and his three children reached Sydney's shores in 1898, Eva could speak eight languages. Among their worldly goods was, so Leon Opit believes, a collection of artworks - paintings, bronzes and statues - which had been collected as they travelled.

The family settled in Glebe and opened a couple of tailor shops where Emanuel and Abe would learn the trade. But it would be an interest in real estate that finally turned the family fortunes. When he died at the age of 69, Emanuel Myerson would be recognised as one of the early success stories of the Sydney real estate trade, worth an estimated £250,000 in the years before the Great Depression. The Romanian tailors would quickly establish themselves in Sydney society.

Eva's life was also about to change. One night, at a social function in Glebe, she met a young man named Lesser Opit, one of the city's more prominent businessmen who had established the White Incandescent Gaslight Company to supply German-made and imported fittings for the city's streetlights.

Lesser's story, though not quite as colourful as the object of his affection, was equally powerful: the son of a Polish watchmaker named Israelovich Opitz, who had emigrated to Sydney with his wife, Paula, and children, Isaac, Lesser and Flora, in the 1880s. The family would later drop the 'z' from their surname because of its Germanic roots and the social impact of the Great War. They, too, might have been collectors of art.

Lesser and Eva were married in August 1911 and built their family home in Kulgoa Road where Leon and his sisters, Elizabeth and Rosalie, grew up in an environment of wealth and privilege. At some stage parts of the Myerson/Opit art collection found its way into the Bellevue Hill property, though Leon Opit could shed no light on the details. Who collected what is still shrouded in family mystery.

Leon favours the theory that it was his mother's side of the family that bought the Cezanne, particularly because of their time in Paris.

Lesser Opit died in 1954 and his bride, much younger, in 1961. Separate inquiries by the Herald yesterday revealed that Leon and his sisters wasted little time in selling the childhood home, which was heavily mortgaged after the Depression.

So what about the paintings? "My sister Elizabeth took most of the stuff, like most big brothers or sisters do," Leon recalled yesterday. "I didn't have much interest in it after Mum died so there was no argument.

"All I remember . . . there was supposed to be some very good ones but I had no idea; art didnt really have much of an impact on me.

"John was always the one who had an eye for art. I encouraged him when he decided to go the Florence to study art restoration. He had a passion for it and I think he took most of the collection when my sister moved to the [United] States."

Gary Opit feels much the same way, or had done until late last week when the theft of the collection made international headlines. He and his younger brother grew up in the eastern suburbs, attending Rose Bay Primary and Vaucluse High School before the family moved to Queensland in the mid 1960s.

They don't see much of each other nowadays, and you get the feeling that Gary feels aggrieved that John does not seem interested in seeing much of his father.

"I'm more of the family man; John seems too caught up in his own world. I don't think he has ever invited me over to see the collection. I sort of figured he was keeping it for the family, slowly restoring it."

Gary says he has spent most of his adult life on environmental studies, exploring the jungles of Papua New Guinea and writing theories about threatened plant and animal species in the NSW and Queensland hinterland. Among other issues, he has written theories about the mythical creatures the yowie and the bunyip.

"I have devoted my life to the environment so material things have not been an issue with me. But I was stunned to find out about the value of these paintings, and I think it's wrong of John to have kept it hidden these years. I mean, these are family heirlooms."

So had he spoken to his brother since the robbery? "Briefly."

He reckoned the robbery was done by some locals. The police had managed to get fingerprints and John was confident "they will catch them".

And what should happen if the paintings are recovered and their value confirmed? "They should be sold and put in a museum, not hidden away in some house."

Perhaps then the Opit/Myerson collection would finally get the appreciation missing for the past century.

John Opit is not sure which of his grandparents collected the Cezanne, but he remembers finding it in the back of a rumpus room cupboard of his father's home in the 1970s.

"My father grew up in a house full of antiques and ended up hating anything old," he said last night.

"I was the only one in the family who knew anything about them. I thought it was a Cezanne but wasn't sure until I was able to test it with UV light about a year ago."